Chapter Three #3
‘Stop crying!’ He sounded exasperated. ‘You’ll make your eyes red and that could ruin everything.’
‘Ruin what? Just go away. Stop mocking me.’
Astonishment lit his dark eyes. ‘When have I ever mocked you?’
‘You said you’d never seen anyone who l-looked like me,’ Evie hiccupped, ‘and I think it’s horribly mean of you to poke fun of me, even if it is partly my fault we’re in this mess.
We’re not all supermodels and wearing supermodel labels doesn’t change that.
I can push my feet into designer shoes just like Kate Moss but that doesn’t give me Kate Moss’s legs. ’
‘Which is a good thing,’ he drawled, ‘because Kate would find it extremely hard to strut her stuff on the runway if you had her legs. For the record, I wasn’t mocking you. I was complimenting you.’
Evie, who had never been complimented on her looks in her life before, looked at him through eyelashes welded together with tears. ‘Pardon?’
His jaw tensed. ‘I find you attractive. Why the hell do you think I kissed you in the first place?’
‘Because you have an abnormal sex drive and you can’t resist anyone naked?’
‘I have a healthy sex drive.’ His dark gaze was unmistakably sexual. ‘I definitely don’t kiss women who try and pick me up. That’s a first for me.’
‘I wasn’t trying to pick you up—’ Still struggling to accept the unlikely fact that he actually did find her attractive, Evie sat up. ‘You don’t think I’m too tall?’
‘Too tall for what?’ That silky tone turned her insides into a quivering mass.
‘For…a woman.’ Evie licked her lips. ‘I make most men feel small and insignificant. They usually don’t want to stand next to me. But I guess you’re pretty tall yourself.’
‘Six four,’ he breathed, his eyes scanning the length of her legs. ‘And I’ve never had a problem with a woman’s height.’
That was because he was unlikely to meet a woman taller than him, Evie thought weakly. ‘Most people think I’m a freak.’
Without giving her a chance to argue, he scooped her off the bed and dumped her on her feet in front of the mirror. ‘Look at yourself. Tell me what you see.’
Evie closed her eyes. ‘I don’t see anything.’
‘Look!’
Evie flinched and opened one eye cautiously. ‘Evie the elephant,’ she said immediately and his brows met in an impatient frown.
‘If that title is a throwback to your childhood, then you’d better let it go now. You’re stunning and that gives us a major problem.’
Stunning?
Evie, who couldn’t even for a single moment think why being considered stunning would present a major problem to anyone, looked at him dizzily.
‘Even if that was true, which it isn’t, I don’t see how that could be a problem.
How can being stunning be a problem? People judge by appearances.
I’ve never been a member of the “oh, it’s such a bore to be beautiful” camp. ’
‘It’s a problem because you need to look wholesome.’
Evie was about to say that she’d been trying to escape from the ‘wholesome’ image for most of her life, when he took her hair in his hands and twisted it, assessing the effect with narrowed eyes. ‘You have good skin.’
‘And freckles.’
‘Freckles are good. They suggest a healthy outdoor life. Wholesome.’
Why did he keep saying wholesome?
‘I’m not with you—’
‘Unfortunately, you are with me and that is why we have a problem.’
‘We wouldn’t have a problem if you hadn’t kissed me.’
‘I’m fully aware of that fact.’ He paced over to the window, keeping his back to her. ‘Get dressed.’
Wriggling into the housekeeper uniform, Evie stared at his broad shoulders. ‘I don’t understand why you’re so stressed about this. You celebrities are always in the newspapers. You may be the reason they want that photo, but it’s going to damage me far more than you.’
He turned, and the expression on his face was all it took to silence her. His eyes were haunted and there was a tension in his body that was unmistakably real.
‘The damage to me could be incalculable,’ he said coldly and Evie thought back to the exchange he’d had earlier with Carlos.
Whatever the ‘deal’ was, he was obviously prepared to stop at nothing to make sure it went through. It had to be about more than money, she thought. It had to be something to do with ego. Winning. The addictive quality of power.
‘And creepy Carlos did this to you on purpose and I got caught in the middle, is that right?’
‘So it would seem.’
She wondered what Carlos had against Rio Zaccarelli. What was he trying to achieve with that photograph? If it hadn’t been her, would he have used someone else? ‘If there is no way you can stop that photograph being published then I’d better make a phone call.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘You’re calling a lover?’
Evie gave a hysterical laugh. ‘Oh, yes—I have loads of those—’ Catching the dangerous gleam in his eyes, her laughter faded. ‘Not a lover. I’m calling my grandfather, if you must know.’
Bold black eyebrows met in a fierce frown. ‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-three, but, like most people of his generation, he doesn’t believe in public displays of affection,’ Evie said wearily, ‘and he absolutely doesn’t believe in one-night stands.
Neither do I, for that matter.’ She tried to sound casual, as if talking about sex was something she did all the time, rather than something she never did.
She stared at Rio Zaccarelli, the epitome of male sophistication, and felt her face grow scarlet.
Her grandfather definitely would have classed him as a real man.
It was the ultimate irony, she thought, to have been caught naked with him.
As if—
‘So you don’t have a lover at the moment.’ His slumberous gaze rested on her mouth. ‘That’s good.’
‘Well, that depends on where you’re standing,’ Evie muttered, wishing she wasn’t standing quite so close to him.
She was getting hotter and hotter. ‘If you must know, I was supposed to be getting married yesterday but my fiancé dumped me. If that hadn’t happened I’d be in Bali now, not London.
I wouldn’t have lost my job and my flat and generally had a completely awful six weeks and there might have been the smallest, remotest chance that my grandfather might be bouncing a baby on his knee next Christmas.
As it is, there’s no chance. None. I don’t expect you to understand.
You look like the sort of person whose life always goes according to plan. ’
‘My plan,’ he said tightly, ‘wasn’t to find a strange woman lying naked in my bed. Fortunately, I’ve always considered adaptability to be an asset. I can turn this situation around.’
‘You can?’ Evie’s gaze drifted to the neck of his shirt.
Dark hairs tangled at the base of his throat and disappeared inside the snowy-white shirt.
She imagined the hair hazing his chest and narrowing over his abdomen, which was no doubt as muscular as the rest of him.
Shocked by her own thoughts, she lifted her eyes back to his and discovered that he was watching her with an unsettling degree of sexual interest.
‘Why did he dump you?’
‘Why does it matter?’ Was she supposed to read him a list?
Evie chewed the corner of her fingernail and then gave an embarrassed shrug.
‘Because he met someone more exciting. Because I’m the girl next door and he’s known me since I was three years old.
Because I was taller than him and I made him feel less of a man—’ She stared at him with exasperation, wondering why she was having to spell this out.
‘Because I’m me. He sent me a text, dumping me. ’
His lips thinned with disapproval. ‘That’s bad.’
‘Hypocrite. Are you seriously trying to tell me you’ve never dumped a woman?’
‘I wouldn’t use the word “dumped”. I’ve ended plenty of relationships, but always in person. I’ve never sent a text. That’s cowardly.’
‘I suppose it’s human nature to avoid a difficult conversation.’
‘Difficult conversations are part of my daily existence.’
Evie had no trouble believing that. ‘Jeff is nothing like you.’ A wimp, her grandfather had called him. ‘Perhaps he was sensible. After all the lies he told, I would have blacked his eye if he’d told me in person.’
His eyes lingered on her hair. ‘A true redhead with a temper to match.’
Reminded of the embarrassing fact that he knew she was a true redhead, Evie ploughed on.
‘What this boils down to is that my grandfather isn’t going to be impressed to see me naked with another man.
He’s very old-fashioned. I don’t want him to think I’m like that.
I’m not like that! I don’t flit from one man to another. ’
‘Unless the other man was someone important to you.’ Rio spoke under his breath and she had a feeling that he was thinking aloud.
That thought was confirmed when she muttered, ‘Sorry?’ and received no response.
‘If it was someone you’d been secretly seeing. A rebound relationship that turned into something special—’ He paced the length of the bedroom and then turned to look at her, his eyes burning dark. ‘Wholesome.’
‘You make me sound like a breakfast cereal,’ she said irritably. ‘Why do you keep saying that?’
‘Never mind. How long ago did you start working here?’
‘I don’t know…I…’
‘Think!’
‘Don’t shout at me! I can’t concentrate when people shout!’
Rio sucked in a breath. ‘I’m not shouting. I just want an answer. When?’
‘About six weeks ago. I came down after Jeff dumped me. I started as a receptionist. I thought it was my big break.’
‘Six weeks—’ Before the words had left his lips, his BlackBerry was in his hand and he was checking something. ‘I was staying in the Penthouse six weeks ago. I spent one night here on my way to New York. I need you to find out if you were working here then.’
‘I know I was because I made a point of avoiding you. So what? What difference does that make?’ Failing to follow his train of thought, Evie looked at him blankly but he was already dialling a number and speaking into his phone in Italian.
He made call after call and each time Evie opened her mouth to ask him what was going on, he simply lifted his hand to silence her until she was ready to scream with exasperation.
‘Hello, I’m here too!’ After his seventh consecutive phone call, she waved at him. ‘I need to ring my grandfather.’
‘First, I want to get this announcement into the press and arrange a photo.’
‘What announcement? What photo?’ Worried, irritable, Evie snapped at him. ‘Haven’t we had enough photos for one day?’
He gave a lethal smile. ‘This photograph will be different.’
‘Different as in I get to wear clothes? Yippee.’ She didn’t know how she was still managing to joke because she’d never felt less like joking about anything in her life.
She knew enough about the press to understand that scandal and humiliation sold better than anything else. ‘Can’t you just stop them printing the photograph? Isn’t there a privacy law or something?’
‘That isn’t going to help us. The best thing we can do is stop this whole thing looking sleazy.’ Ruthlessly focused, he strode towards the door of the Penthouse. ‘Stay out of sight. Whatever you do, don’t emerge from the bedroom until I come and get you. I don’t want anyone to see you.’
‘Why? What are you going to do?’
‘Find you some proper clothes and then show the world we didn’t have a one-night stand.’
Bemused, Evie stared at him. ‘How?’
‘By proving that we share something special.’ A triumphant gleam in his eyes, he yanked open the door and turned to look at her. ‘I’m going to announce our engagement.’